Contributors 2003-2008 This page features biographies of contributors to the first five years of Contrary. It is not regularly updated. Contributor biographies now appear at the bottom of each page. A John M. Anderson teaches creative writing and the Emily Dickinson Seminar (and this semester a class called Keats and Stevens) at Boston College. He divides his time between Boston and Cripple Creek, Colorado. He has work just out in Fugue, Rosebud, Argestes, the Aurorean, The Carolina Quarterly, The Big Ugly, Barbaric Yawp, South Dakota Review, Willow Review and others. His chapbook, Dictionary Quilt (Pudding House, 2007), is about the weird dream landscapes of the American southwest.   Susan Anderson is a mother, a grandmother, a widow, and a writer who lives in Allentown, New Jersey. “Alone in Paris,” in the Summer 2008 Contrary, is her first publication. Stella Apostolidis is a native of Queens, NY, where she is currently completing her doctorate in English. She teaches English composition and literature at St. John's University while working ironically at The Golf Digest Companies (the irony is that she's never played golf, nor does she plan to). She has published poems in Wings Magazine and Slow Trains, with poems forthcoming in The Rose and Thorn.   Ramesh Avadhani lives in Bangalore, where he reads and writes almost all the time, unless he is photographing, walking, gossiping, or listening. More than 50 of his stories and non-fiction articles have appeared in magazines in the United States, England, Spain, Australia, India, and the United Arab Emirates. B Fiction Editor Frances Badgett is a writer in Bellingham, Washington. She has a BA from Hollins University and an MFA from Vermont College. She's currently working on her second novel, Cascadia.   Barry Ballard's poetry has most recently appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Connecticut Review, Margie, and Puerto del Sol. His most recent collection is A Body Speaks Through Fence Lines (Pudding House, 2006). He writes from Burleson, Texas.   Poetry Editor Shaindel Beers is a professor of English at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon. She also teaches in the Humanities in Perspective program at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institute. Her poetry, fiction, and social commentary have appeared in Willow Review, Poetry Miscellany, Hunger Mountain, and numerous other journals and publications. She completed her Master of Arts at the University of Chicago in 2000 and her Master of Fine Arts in poetry at Vermont College in 2005. Lindsay Bell holds an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago and a BA in English from Luther College in Decorah, IA. Her work has recently appeared in Black Clock, Columbia Poetry Review, 27 rue de fleures, and elsewhere. She has received the Lannan Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Currently, she resides in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago with her husband, David, a seminarian at the Lutheran School of Theology and cat St. Alphonsus Maria di Liguori, patron of theologians and vocations. Virginia Bell’s poetry is forthcoming in two anthologies to be published by the Canadian Federation of Poets in 2008. Her poetry has also appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly and The Innisfree Poetry Journal. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature and taught as an adjunct professor for ten years in the English Department at Georgetown University before moving to the Chicago area. She has also published scholarly articles on activist writers such as Rosario Castellanos, Eduardo Galeano, and Leslie Marmon Silko.   Karina Borowicz hails from New Bedford, Massachusetts. She attended Bard College and the University of Massachusetts, where she received a degree in History and Russian. A poet by nature but a teacher by trade, she has taught in the United States, Lithuania, and Russia. She currently lives and works in Moscow.   Heywood Broun was a columnist for The New York World and other newspapers. He died in 1939. Read all about him here ...> C P.M. Calandrino worked in Silicon Valley for twenty years to support his writing habit. After the 2001 crash, he moved to Oregon, where he lives with his partner, novelist Cai Emmons. His stories and poems have appeared in a number of journals. He's at work on a novel and has just completed a full-length play, The Final Leg, about a triple amputee traveling to Zurich as a suicide tourist. The play is not autobiographical.   Daniel Cecil is a 31-year-old writer of Irish descent who drinks an awful lot and likes to embody as many stereotypes as possible. He lives in a tiny studio apartment -- so small, in fact, that his ego often has to sleep out in the hall -- and works as a janitor in an Indianapolis hospital. He's spent a large chunk of his life involved in various political causes, all of which have failed to achieve any lasting change. After years of writing, he only recently gathered the courage to send his scribblings out into the world. His work debuted in Contrary. C.E. Chaffin edited and published The Melic Review for eight years prior to its hiatus. Widely published on the net and more narrowly in print, he has written literary criticism, fiction, personal essays, and has served as the featured poet in more than twenty magazines. His work has appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Byline, The Cortland Review, Poetry, Kimera, Magma, Pif, The Pedestal, the Philadelphia Inquirer Book Review, and Rattle, among others. Afraid of labels and hungry for legitimacy, Gabriel Check has embarked on many careers in his thirty years. But through them all, whether employed as fish processor, catering company owner, or copywriter for a celebrity photo website, he has continued to write. Check graduated from the University of Chicago in 2005 with a Master of the Arts in the Humanities. He currently lives in Brooklyn and works construction. Andrew Coburn is the author of 12 novels, three of which have been made into films in France. His work has been translated into 13 languages. He lives in Andover, Mass. Kristiana Colón is a recent graduate of the University of Chicago and an MFA student at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her exposure to poetry began in the performance and slam poetry realm, and she began writing and giving readings in Chicago as a teen. Publication credits include the University of Chicago’s Blacklight and a zine published by the Young Chicago Authors organization: GirlSpeak. She is also a playwright and performer.   M. Alan Cox has published poems online in Raw Ether. He has BA from Western Michigan University and is currently enrolled in the MFA program at Vermont College. He spends his time roving between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Michigan.   Patricia Cronin writes short fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines, including Quarterly West, Alabama Literary Review, and Fish Stories. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Roosevelt University and is assistant poetry editor for Moon Journal.   Walter Cummins is a professor emeritus of English at Farleigh Dickinson University and editor-in-chief of The Literary Review. He has published more than 100 stories in numerous journals as well as the story collections Witness and Where We Live. A new collection, Local Music, will be out in August 2007. Early in his career, two novels, A Stranger to the Deed and Into Temptation, came out as paperback originals. He co-authored the 2005 book version of The Literary Traveler with Contrary contributor Thomas E. Kennedy. D Stephen M. Danos is currently a fourth-year English major at the University of Iowa with plans to graduate in May. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, he lived in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, and ended up in Naperville, Illinois. His poetry has appeared in JMWW, Softblow, King Log, Poetrybay, and Half Drunk Muse, as well as in undergraduate journals. He serves as poetry editor for earthwords, Iowa's undergraduate literary and art magazine, and he was a member of Iowa's Fall 2005 Undergraduate Poetry Workshop, taught by Dean Young. Welsh by origin, Laurence Davies now lives in Scotland, where he is a senior research fellow at Glasgow University. He also has a longstanding connection with the comparative literature program at Dartmouth. His fiction has appeared in StoryQuarterly, Natural Bridge, The Diagram, Café Irreal, New England Review, and other print or electronic journals. He is the editor of Joseph Conrad's collected letters. A Davies Index...> Dan DeWeese has work in current or forthcoming issues of Salt Hill, Washington Square, and Oregon Humanities. He has received an Oregon Literary Arts fellowship. He teaches writing at Portland State University.   Gina DiPonio hails from Northern Michigan but now lives in Chicago. She worked as a freelance journalist in Traverse City, MI, while studying through Vermont College's low-residency Adult Degree Program. She often strapped her schoolwork on her back to travel to such far-away locales as Morocco, Argentina, Israel, and England. After a summer working for Traverse Magazine, she moved to Chicago to attend the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. Damian Dressick lives and writes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His fiction has appeared or is slated to appear in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Vestal Review, Caketrain, Flashquake, Storyglossia, Ghoti, The Worcester Review, 3711 Atlantic, Kennesaw Review, and other literary journals. He holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and has recently completed his first novel. He teaches creative writing at Robert Morris University and at the University of Pittsburgh through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Joseph Drogos is a Chicago writer and educator with degrees in writing from Georgetown University and the University of Chicago. He earned awards from the Chicago Headline Club and the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association for work as a journalist, and his writing has appeared in Chicago journals, both active (MAKE Magazine) and defunct (Midnight Mind). His personal heroes include Jaroslav Hasek and Denis Savard. Aidan Andrew Dun spent a fantastical childhood in the West Indies and heard a calling to poetry from an early age. He returned to London as a teenager, then travelled globally for more than a decade before writing his first epic poem, Vale Royal (Goldmark 1995), which, launched at the Royal Albert Hall, earned him the title Poet of Kings Cross. His second epic, Universal (Goldmark 2002), was launched in the USA with a reading at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. He is currently at work on a third epic and has a volume of shorter poems in preparation. E Luke Evans is not a poet; he is a scribbler of verse. Occasionally he even waxes prosaic, but don't tell anyone. Read his poetry at Edifice Wrecked, Thieves Jargon, and Lamoille Lamentations. His prose can be found at Opium, Hiss Quarterly, and MindFire Renewed.   F Meg Franklin is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Florida. Her poems have appeared in Salamander and the British journal, Stand. Stefanie Freele was born and raised in Wisconsin and currently lives on the West Coast. Stefanie’s recent fiction credits include American Literary Review, South Dakota Review, Westview, Permafrost, Quality Women’s Fiction, Café Irreal, Hobart, and Pebble Lake Review. She is an MFA student at the Whidbey Writers Workshop in Washington and has recently completed her first novel. Ted Frisbie teaches English, Spanish, Music, and Social Studies to seventh and eighth graders at the Carbondale Community School in Carbondale, Colorado, where he lives in a cabin on the slopes of Mount Sopris. When he's not writing poetry, officiating weddings, or leading cultural exchange tours to Sri Lanka, he's playing mandolin in the Hell Roaring String Band or fronting The Great Unconformity ("Representing 1.6 Billon years of missing rock!") down at The Black Nugget, corner of Fourth and Main.   G Soren Gauger is a Canadian writer living in Krakow, Poland and working as a translator, lecturer and essayist. He has two collections of short stories published, one book-length (Hymns to Millionaires, Twisted Spoon Press, USA/Prague) and one considerably smaller (Quatre Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus, Ravenna Press, USA) as well as more than a dozen publications in journals across Canada, the United States, and Europe. His translation of Polish writer Jerzy Ficowski's Waiting for the Dog to Sleep was published (again, by Twisted Spoon Press) in 2006. Cephalia and Ludwig is part of a new collection entitled The Still Life. Robert Gibbons is poetry and fiction editor of the interdisciplinary journal Janus Head. Author of three full-length books of prose poems, Gibbons has five prose poems in the anthology, The Other Side of Sorrow: Poets Speak Out about Conflict, War, and Peace. His writing appears in numerous journals, including The American Journal of Print, Evergreen Review, Frank (Paris), The Literary Review, and The Mississippi Review. His latest collection, Body of Time, has been featured by Evergreen Review and reviewed by the Romanian scholar, Camelia Elias, in Cercles, published in France. He is a regular contributor to Alexander Cockburn’s Counterpunch.   Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, and she also helps her husband (a retired wildlife biologist) with his field projects. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and she’s included in the anthology California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her newest book, The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006), is winner of the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. Amy Groshek lives in Madison, Wisconsin. She holds an MFA from the University of Alaska Anchorage. Amy's work has appeared in Bloom, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Radical Society. Her first chapbook, Shin Deep, was published in February, 2008, by Finishing Line Press. A Groshek Index...>   H Recipient of Contrary's nomination for Best Chicago Columnist, and perhaps even Only Chicago Columnist, William Hanigan writes regularly for The Tap, Chicago's Bar Journal. When he's not drinking, thinking about drinking, or writing about drinking, Hanigan is a a teacher who works with autistic children. He's also a particularly curious sort of long-suffering baseball fan: a Sox fan on the North Side.   Kate Harding lives in Toronto with two geriatric mutts. She is an MFA candidate in fiction at Vermont College, former Managing Editor of Insomniac Press, and a frequent victim of the intellectually and emotionally perlious combination of red wine and Lucinda Williams. Her work has appeared in Room of One's Own and The Dalhousie Review and is forthcoming in Indiana Review. "Ditch" is more-or-less an excerpt from her novel-in-progress, Big Shoulders.   Jen Harris is a graduate of the University of Chicago's Master of Arts Program in the Humanities. She lives in Southern California, where she reads and writes non-fiction and poetry.   Associate Editor Kevin Heath teaches writing at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio, where he lives with his wife and three children. He has a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Cincinnati and has published in various places including The Chariton Review, the Mars Hill Review, and Tennis magazine.   Aaron Hellem attends the MFA Program at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. His works have most recently appeared in Facets Magazine, the Bitter Oleander, Antithesis Common, Indite Circle, and Projected Letters. He has work forthcoming in Avatar Review, Dandelion Magazine, Ellipsis, and the Gihon River Review.   Russell Hodin lives on a small ranch on the Central California Coast and drives his cartoons into town in one of those old Ford pickups with the big curved fenders and the wooden bed. His cartoons have been honored as the best in California and the nation, and they've been adopted by the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations that, like Hodin, refuse to compromise their principles. His cartoons appear regularly in New Times, an alternative weekly in San Luis Obispo. B.E. Hopkins is a writer and editor living in Paris, France. His work has appeared in PEN International magazine, The Independent, and The Washington College Review. He has written several short films, two feature-length scripts, a collection of short stories, and he has just completed his first novel. Holly Nicole Hoxter lives in Baltimore and received her BA in English from the University of Maryland in 2003. Her short story "Rats" received the second runner-up prize in the Ninth Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest. She is currently working on a novel and has been for quite some time.   I Chris Ingraham holds degrees from Amherst College and the University of Chicago. He has lived in Tucson, Amherst, Madrid, Washington D.C., Chicago, New York, and, most recently, Boulder, Colorado, where he hopes to write more wakefully. He has a story in the Summer 2006 issue of New England Review.   K Thomas E. Kennedy’s books include 12 volumes of fiction (most recently the four novels of The Copenhagen Quartet, 2002-2005, and forthcoming in 2007, the novel A Passion In the Desert and story collection Cast Upon the Day), two essay collections, and several critical studies and anthologies.  His stories, essays, poems, and translations from the Danish appear regularly in periodicals and anthologies and have won O Henry, Pushcart, and other prizes. A long interview with Kennedy will appear in the 40th anniversary issue of South Carolina Review in fall 2007. Lauren Ashleigh Kenny is a student of English at Longwood University in Virginia. She grew up on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and she writes poetry drawing upon her experiences visiting family in rural Old Trap, North Carolina. “Farming Silence,” published in Contrary in Spring 2007, is her debut publication. Katie Kidder works as a copywriter at nStrumental Designs, Inc. Her work can be read in So to Speak, The Exquisite Corpse, Ellipses and Where Y'at Magazine, among others. She is currently completing her Masters Degree in English Literature at the University of New Orleans. A. S. King's fiction has appeared in Washington Square, FRiGG, Literary Mama, Amarillo Bay, Underground Voices, The Huffington Post, Eclectica, Word Riot, Natural Bridge, Lit103.3 and other cool places. Her first novel for young adults, The Dust of 100 Dogs, is due from Flux in February 2009. Thomas King holds an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Washington University, where he worked as fiction editor for Willow Springs magazine and interviewed such writers as Marilynne Robinson and David Huddle. He lives in San Francisco, teaches English at the City College of San Francisco, and interns at McSweeney's and The Believer magazines. Clare Kirwan lives near Liverpool, England. She writes poetry and short fiction and performs regularly as part of the Dead Good Poets Society. She has had poems or stories published widely including in MsLexia, Orbis, The Interpreter’s House, Electric Spec, Aberrant Dreams, and the anthology, Read by Dawn. Ron Klassnik's mother found him in the reeds next to her little cottage in Lithuania. She raised him with her cats. When he isn’t meowing for milk you will find him translating the Bible into Greek. He enjoys following cricket on the internet and believes he will live forever. He also thinks he will save us all. He lives in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico and writes full time. He is a graduate of Vermont College with an MFA in poetry.   Laura Kolb is a graduate of the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. Before returning to school, she taught high school English in Morocco. Her poems have appeared in the Columbia Review. Amber Krieger is a writer in Portland, Oregon. She has an MFA in Fiction from Columbia College Chicago. L Gregory Lawless is a 2004 graduate of the University of Chicago’s Master of Arts Program in the Humanities, and a 2006 graduate of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He is currently working on a volume of poems, Sky Dogs. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. Sarah Layden holds an MFA from Purdue University. Her fiction can be found in Artful Dodge and 42opus, and her poetry will appear in Tipton Poetry Journal. She teaches writing at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and Marian College. She previously worked as a newspaper reporter in Syracuse, N.Y.   Associate Editor Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein is a poet, writer, and resident artist in the Chicago Public Schools. Her work has appeared in Primavera, The Comstock Review, The Evansville Review, After Hours, Stray Dog, Passionfruit, Another Chicago Magazine, and Poetry Motel. A recipient of the 2002 Illinois Arts Council Finalist Award in Poetry, she conducts workshops on literary arts integration in urban schools. She has traveled extensively throughout Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and South America as a writer and literary arts educator. Robert Lietz is a professor of English and Creative Writing (fiction and poetry) at Ohio Northern University. Nearly 500 of his poems have appeared in more than 100 journals in the U.S. and Canada. Seven collections of poems have been published, including Running in Place (L’Epervier Press), At Park and East Division ( L’Epervier Press), The Lindbergh Half-Century (L’Epervier Press), The Inheritance (Sandhills Press), and Storm Service (Basfal Books). Basfal also published After Business in the West: New and Selected Poems.   Patrick Loafman has been a seasonal wildlife biologist since 1988. He has published poems in more than eighteen journals (including Adirondack Review, Open Spaces and Bellowing Ark) and two chapbooks of poetry. He is currently trying to get his first novel published. His prose poems in the Summer 2007 issue of Contrary are from an unpublished chapbook manuscript titled, Hymns Written with Birds’ Tongues. M Known best as a screenwriter, Ben Maddow completed at least 27 screenplays, including The Asphalt Jungle, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, and the adaptation of William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust. He wrote and directed several award-winning documentaries, biographies of Edward Weston and W. Eugene Smith, a novel, a play that was produced in New York in 1981, and a short story, "You, Johann Sebastian Bach," that won an O'Henry Prize. He composed poems under the pseudonym David Wolff and published them in Poetry and other magazines. Maddow died in 1992.   Andy Martrich lives in Fort Green in Brooklyn, NY. He plays the musical saw, mandolin, ukelele, and drums. His writing has appeared in New Zealand's Just Another Art Movement as well as Muse Apprentice Guild, Can We Have Our Ball Back, American Dissident, Essence, and other magazines. His first chapbook, I think we should lay here..., came out in 2003 with Foothills Publishing.   Karyna McGlynn is a writer and photographer living in Seattle. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Wisconsin Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Plainsongs, No Exit, The Paumanok Review, Medicinal Purposes Literary Review, The Blue Mouse, Nidus, and Pindeldyboz. Ms. McGlynn is the editor of Screaming Emerson Press, which publishes chapbooks by local spoken-word poets. She attends the creative writing program at Seattle University where she serves as poetry editor for the Cascadia Review.     Editor Jeff McMahon is a reformed journalist who now chases stories that don’t pretend to be true. His work has appeared in numinous newspapers and magazines, including Newcity, New Times, the Arizona Republic, After Hours, and The Rogue Voice. His commentaries won a national first place award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnistsa and two Golden Quills from the International Society of Newspaper Editors. He now lives in his Chicago, survives as a freelance writer and editor, and teaches writing at the University of Chicago.   Michael P. McManus lives and writes in West Monroe, Louisiana. His poems and short stories have appeared in numerous publications including Atlanta Review, Euphony, The Adirondack Review, and others. He has work forthcoming in Main Street Rag, Riven, Louisiana Literature, and Midwest Quarterly, among others. He has received an Artist Fellowship Award from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the Virginia Prize from The Lyric.   Edward Mc Whinney lives in Cork, Ireland. He's not all that young nor all that old. He's had stories published in Cyphers and Salmon in Ireland and in ezines on the Internet. So says he. A Mc Whinney Index...>   Michele Melnick received her MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College. Her work has appeared in Many Waters and the Brooklyn Review.   Corey Mesler has published poetry and stories in dozens of literary journals and four anthologies. One of his short stories was chosen for the 2002 edition of New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, and his novel-in-dialogue, Talk,was published by Livingston Press in 2002. Livingston Press has just published his second novel, We Are Billion Year-Old Carbon. His latest three poetry chapbooks are Chin-Chin in Eden (2003), Dark on Purpose (2004), Short Story and Other Short Stories (2006) and The Agoraphobe’s Pandiculations (2006). His poem, “Sweet Annie Divine,” was chosen for Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. He also claims to have written “It’s my Party.” Most importantly, he is Toby and Chloe’s dad and Cheryl’s husband. With his wife he owns Burke's Book Store in Memphis, one of the country's oldest (1875) and best-known independent bookstores.   Ami Chen Mills-Naim is a poet and author based in Northern California. After an award-winning stint as staff writer for Metro Newspapers in Silicon Valley, Naim went on to write for Mother Jones, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, Glamour, P.O.V., and other publications. She is executive director of the Center for Sustainable Change, an organization dedicated to unleashing the power of resilience in youth and education. Along these lines, she is the recent author of The Spark Inside: A Special Book for Youth (Lone Pine Publishing, 2005). She works regularly with youth in correctional facilities and schools, as well as with parents and educators. Naim is a wife and mother, pilgrim, teacher, and constant learner.   Mary E. Mitchell has published essays in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Minnesota Star Tribune, Family Circle, First for Women, the literary journal The Writing Self, and online at Kaplancollege.com. Her first novel, Starting Out Sideways, St. Martin’s Press, is scheduled for release in May 2007, with a second novel to follow in 2008. She has won the New England PEN Discovery award for her novel, The Nearness of You. She is an editor of Tiferet, A Journal of Spiritual Literature, and a member of Two Bridges Writers’ Group, NY, NY.   N Monika Elise Nagy graduated from Stanford University with a triple major in poetry, kinesiology, calculus, and trumpet (yes, we know that's four), then went on to study humanities at the University of Chicago and politics at SUNY Buffalo. Despite this, she lives an impossible romance, with the music of Italo Calvino in her head. A dabbler in physics as well as needlepoint, Nagy successfully contained the California climate within a sun-colored sleeveless parka, which she wears on even the warmest days.   O Kiki Petrosino completed a Master of Arts in the Humanities at the University of Chicago in 2004 and an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa in 2006. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in 42opus, POOL, Forklift Ohio, and Unpleasant Event Schedule. She lives in Iowa City, where she is currently working on a book-length collection of poems. P J.M. Patrick lives in Connecticut with a small cactus and a squirrel named Todd. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Smokelong Quarterly, The Summerset Review, Night Train, and Noo Journal, among others. Derek Pollard is on the English faculty at Monmouth Academy in Howell, New Jersey. He is also an associate editor at New Issues Poetry & Prose, and a contributing editor at Barrow Street. He has poems and reviews appearing or forthcoming in Colorado Review, Court Green, Interim, No Tell Motel, Pleiades, and Quarterly West, among others. Liz Prato is a massage therapist in Portland, Oregon. Her writing has appeared in Subtropics, Berkeley Fiction Review, Northwest Women’s Journal, and ZYZZYVA. She lives with her husband, a bookseller, musician, and rock critic. And, of course, she is hard at work on a novel. R Amy Reed grew up in and around Seattle and currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she completed her MFA at New College of California. Her short work has appeared in Kitchen Sink and Fiction, among others. Her debut novel, Beautiful, will be published in the Fall of 2009 by Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Shuster. Patrick Reichard is a graduate of the Master of Arts Program in Humanities at the University of Chicago and a professor of English at Prairie State College. Vincent Reusch is in the final year of a creative writing PhD program at Western Michigan University, working on a novel and trying to keep the short stories short for a while. He recently published fiction in Alaska Quarterly Review and in Roanoke Review, where his story, "The Yellow Scooter," won the 2006 fiction contest. Susan Rosalsky sometimes lives in Jersey City. She has published her work in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Beacon Press Best of 1999, FlashPoint, and Smoke Box.   Wade Rubenstein was born in 1964 in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. He has written for Taconic Newspapers in New York, practiced law in Manhattan, and trained as a boxer in Somerville, MA and New Paltz, NY. For the past seven years, Rubenstein has lived in Rhinebeck, New York. His first novel, Gullboy, was published in September 2005 by Perseus/Counterpoint.   S Wes Saylors was born in San Diego but grew to astonishing manhood in North Carolina. He holds an MFA in fiction writing from Vermont College and teaches a little English in Boone, North Carolina. His story "This Just In: Bear Drinks Sodas for Money" won the North Carolina State University Short-Short Story Award, which was judged by Margot Livesey.   Charles Schubert teaches high school biology in Salinas. He graduated from the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University with degrees in Ecology and teaching, respectively, and holds an MFA from Vermont College in poetry. He has been published in Creative Juices, Red Rock Review, and other literary publications. He has several poems included in Inspiration: Stories and Poems Written By Teachers, published by Hill Press in Marina, California. One of the poems won first place in the book submissions contest. He also has a poem in the 2004 Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets.   The way Patrick Sheehan tells it, he still spends his days and his nights at McCuddy's Tavern at 35th and Shields, nursing a bottle of Falstaff and watching the Sox on the black & white within earshot of the homerun fireworks at Old Comiskey. In addition to his militant defenses of the working person, which appear regularly in Chicago Worker, Sheehan has published some extremely short short stories and a poem or two. Allison Shoemaker is a recent graduate of Western Michigan University's creative writing program. She also studied as a director in the theater program at WMU and is currently trying to break into Chicago's theater scene. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Pedestal, Barnwood, The Common-Line Project, Dark Sky Magazine, and admit2. Mark Spencer’s books include The Weary Motel (winner of the Omaha Prize for the Novel, Backwaters Press), Only Missing (winner of the Faulkner Society Faulkner Award for the Novella), Love and Reruns in Adams County (a novel, Random House), Wedlock (two novellas and three short stories, Watermark Press), and Spying on Lovers (stories, winner of the Bradshaw Book Award, Amelia Press). His short fiction has appeared in many journals. He is the dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Arkansas, Monticello. Tracy Steinhandler teaches composition and literature at three St. Louis-area colleges and writes poetry and fiction in her spare time while her fiance, Ben, finishes law school. She still doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up, but she plans to relocate to Chicago soon with Ben and their two meatball-shaped cats.   T Pierre Tchetgen lives in Chicago and teaches full-time in the Humanities Department at Harold Washington College. He wrote his first book of poetry, Dirges of Becoming, while he was completing a Master of Arts in Humanities from the University of Chicago. He has performed his work in various venues around the country (such as Chicago's Second City and Boston's Lizard Lounge), and is currently working on a hip-hop music album in collaboration with Storm Before the Calm, a Chicago-based collective of musicians and artists.   Brian Tierney lives with his family in Boulder, Colorado. An excerpt from his novel, The Book of Tobit, will be published in Ninth Letter.   V Andrew von Engel is the owner of engel design, a graphic arts firm based in Eugene, Oregon. Much of his work adorns the landscape of his former home, Central California, where his signs and logos politely accomplish their task without detracting from the green and golden hills around them. His work has illustrated many a publication too, and they politely accomplish their task without detracting from the words around them. He won't tell you any of this himself. He'll just say: "I'm a struggling freelance graphic designer, struggling like all your contributors trying to be heard." W Joshua Walker is a Moscow-based writer originally from Boulder. He writes fiction, poetry, and a semi-weekly column for Element Moscow. He also translates, and he teaches English, Russian, and literature. He received his Master of Arts in Slavic Languages and Literature from Stanford University in 2005.   Stacey Warde is a monk trapped in secular society, a monk without vows, a monk for the faith that has yet to be prophesied. He currently labors as the editor of the Rogue Voice, a roguish voice published on the Central Coast of California. He has written for publications far and wide, often on spirituality, sexuality, and sustainability. Or some combination of the three. He has often been seen dancing. Clive Warner is a British novelist and teacher living as an expatriate in the mountains of Mexico with his wife, two children, a retriever, a Saint Bernard puppy, a cat, and a desert tortoise. He writes poetry, action-adventure and speculative fiction. His first novel, Appointment in Samara, was published in June 2002. His second, third, and fourth are underway in various stages of progress. Robert Warrington is a playwright in the UK. His poetry and microfiction have been picked up by Leaf Books and appear in several of their anthologies. Online he has been published by Slow Trains but his claim to fame is coming second to Contrary Poetry Editor Shaindel Beers in last year's Dylan Days competition. Grace Wells is a British poet and writer living in County Tipperary in Southern Ireland. Her first book, Gyrfalcon, a novel for children, won the Eilis Dillon Best Newcomer Award and was selected as an International White Raven Choice. Her poetry has been published in numerous Irish journals. She was chosen for Poetry Ireland's Introductions Series in 2003. She is currently seeking a publisher for her first collection, When God has been Called Away to Greater Things. A Grace Wells Index...> S.L. Wisenberg has published a short-story collection, "The Sweetheart Is In" (Northwestern University Press) and an essay collection, Holocaust Girls: History, Memory & Other Obsessions (University of Nebraska Press). She is the creative nonfiction editor of Another Chicago Magazine and co-director of the MA in Creative Writing program at Northwestern. She also teaches creative writing for the University of Chicago's Graham School of General Studies.Contradiction-3.htmlLaurence-Davies.htmlAmy-Groshek.htmlEdward-Mc-Whinney.htmlGrace-Wells.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4